A Crisis of Identities

Now up at RevolutionSF are my reviews of Brad Meltzer's Identity Crisis 2-4 out now from DC Comics. As usual with my reviews, I kind of amble around as I discuss a variety of issues tangental to the story itself. I suppose I'm not the reviewer for you if you're looking for a short, pithy, thumbs-up-or-down evaluation. Here's a taste:

About the time graphic novels and collected trade paperbacks began to dominate comic publishers' bottom lines, the industry witnessed the rise of what has been termed "decompressed storytelling." What that means is that stories that could be adequately told in one issue are stretched and padded to fill two or three issues. Or, more likely, a two-issue story now drags out to six issues in order to fill out a trade edition. At the same time on television, the X-Files was making a killing doing essentially the same thing — spinning out a conspiracy mystery each week, with agents Mulder and Scully coming tantalizingly close to the answers but never quite learning anything.

Believe it or not, I actually turned in these reviews within a week of the comics hitting the streets. Real Life intervened, however, keeping them from being published until now. Such is life. If you're interested in charting my reaction to the series from the start, you can go back to my Identity Crisis no. 1 and start from there. Chronological order counts for something, you know.

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Book inches closer to reality

Did some more work on Voices of Vision via email with the folks at Nebraska. It's interesting how the process works--it's not what I expected, but then again, I'm not entirely clear what my expectations were. Blurbs of endorsement from Brad Meltzer and Robin Hobb have been added to the cover copy. Some minor changes to the text have been made, and one significant error that crept into the copy during the process was caught and fixed as well.

Nebraska's spring catalog will be issued in December, and contain a listing for my book, designated "A Bison original." Neat-o. Also, they've completely revamped the University of Nebraska Press website, and Voices of Vision is now listed amongst the other Frontiers of the Imagination series titles. It's something of an ego boost to see my humble book sandwiched between Pierre Benoit's The Queen of Atlantis and H.G. Wells' In the Days of the Comet. Fun stuff.

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More X-Prize excitement

SpaceShipOne flew today, and preliminary results say the flight cracked the 62-mile altitude required to qualify for the X-Prize. But like the ship's previous flight, that pesky "unexpected roll" disrupted the carefully choreographed launch:

SpaceShipOne appeared to go into an unexpected roll and shut down its main engine just after it started, following the high-altitude drop. Commentators in a live webcast were concerned.

"It appeared there were some wrinkles" near the apex of the flight, said webcast commentator Jim Scott. It was not yet clear what the problem was, however.

The first roll, months back, was dismissed as an easily-correctable glitch. This one hints at a pattern. I sincerely hope they can get it fixed in time for a safe turnaround flight on Oct. 4. To win the $10 million prize, they have to launch again within a two-week period.

Win or lose, however, Scaled Composites already made back a nice chunk of their development costs with the recent licensing of the technology by Virgin Galactic. The going ticket price of $200,000 per is still out of my price range, but if economics of scale ever get it down to the $200 range, buddy, I'm there!

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Sky Captain redux

Went to see "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" again last night, with the family. Lisa wanted to see it with me the first time, but Calista and Keela opted for "Princess Diaries 2" instead. Regal Cinemas in San Antonio was offering free tickets with a donation of food to the local food bank, so we took a bunch of boxes of mac & cheese and got in pretty darn cheap. It was a madhouse. Half the city seemed to have turned out to take advantage.

I actually enjoyed the movie more this time than the first time I saw it. I wasn't as stressed with the urge to not miss anything. I just let it wash over me, and was able to enjoy a lot of subtle touches and details that got lost in the sensory overload the first time around. It's still not a perfect film. I'm not even sure if it's in my top 10, but I enjoyed the heck out of it. Lisa liked it too, saying it was a lot of fun. Calista wasn't sure if she liked it or not, as there was a distinct lack of child protagonists and talking animals in the film. She did allow that it was exciting, and thought the scenes where the air planes convert to submarines and go underwater were "cool." Keela fell asleep.

As we were leaving, two men ahead of us were complaining that it was a dumb film, and that the folks waiting to get in to the next showing shouldn't waste their time. Some people Just Don't Get It, and it's pretty clear you can't reach them. But it's still sad that a film as fun and original as Sky Captain is struggling so at the box office.

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And you can get Kirkus to review 'em!

As if vanity presses and editorial scammers aren't successful enough, now we have the Washington Post encouraging would-be writers to bypass professional publishing houses and throw their money away on self-publishing:

If you're telling yourself for the 57th time, "I could write a book," but you don't have a direct line to the editors at Random House, it may be time to consider self-publishing. Don't knock it: James Redfield's "The Celestine Prophecy" and John Grisham's "A Time to Kill" started this way.

Of course, what they fail to mention is that for every "A Time to Kill" there are a hundred thousand other self-published books that came out stillborn, gathering mold and dust in basements and garages across America. And the article breathlessly insists that self-published authors must shell out the big bucks to ensure their book gets noticed by the masses:

Make no mistake: All this will be costly. Steve Boorstein, the Bethesda-based host of the syndicated radio show "The Clothing Doctor," says he spent $7,500 on the first printing of his book, "The Ultimate Guide to Shopping & Caring for Clothing." That covered the initial print run and paid for an illustrator, a PR firm, an editor, a designer and a self-publishing consultant, he said.

This, of course, ignores the fact that most first-time novel advances hover in the $5,000 range. How, pray tell, is the self-published author going to break even, much less make any money on the deal?

I once tried to start a writer's group while I lived in Temple. It was an ill-fated, painful experience. One "writer" refused to bring any written copy to be critiqued, because her writing was so personal to her and she couldn't bear to have anyone see it. But her husband told her it was great, and since the major publishing houses were a big in-crowd scam, they'd decided to pony up several thousand dollars and publish it through a vanity press. You tell me what's wrong with this scenario. The family is willing to empty the ol' piggy bank to produce a bunch of unedited, over-priced novels that will be locked away in their garage because the writing is so "personal" she couldn't bear to have even her writing group see it. This is the point where I begin banging my head into the wall. When I tried to point out the flaws inherent in this course of action, I was patronizingly told I'm naive and don't really understand how publishing works.

Fortunately, I don't have to rant about the Washington Post article (aren't you happy). Instead, Nick Mamatas does it for me with his blog entry How To Lose Your Money And Waste Your Time. Kudos go out to Bookslut for starting me out on this tear.

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The delicate art of book blurbing

Tish Fobbin, one of the marketing folks at Nebraska, has provided me with the preliminary descriptive jacket copy for Voices of Vision. This was unexpected, as I've gathered from other writers that often the first inkling as to what the jacket copy will say about said book comes when the contributor's copies arrive in the mail. So I have been afforded the happy opportunity to review the sales pitch in advance and offer my comments. Take a look:

Voices of Vision
Creators of Science Fiction and Fantasy Speak
By Jayme Lynn Blaschke

As the world around us becomes more fantastic, and science itself more surreal, the realms of science fiction and fantasy become correspondingly both more bizarre and more relevant. Voices of Vision offers a rare look into the inner workings of this realm and into the very thoughts and methods of those who make it tick: editors and writers of science fiction and fantasy, and creators of comic books and graphic novels. In wide-ranging interviews that are by turns intimate and thought provoking, irreverent and outrageous, Jayme Lynn Blaschke talks shop with some of the most interesting voices in these genres as well as the people behind them, such as current Science Fiction Weekly and former Science Fiction Age editor Scott Edelman.

Writers such as Robin Hobb, Charles de Lint, Patricia Anthony, and Elizabeth Moon; Neil Gaiman, Brad Meltzer, and other revered authors of comic books and graphic novels; and icons such as Samuel R. Delaney, Gene Wolfe, Harlan Ellison, and Jack Williamson talk to Blaschke about what it’s like to do what they do, how they work and how they started, and where they think the genre is headed. Editors like Edelman discuss their publishing philosophies and strategies, the origins and probable directions of their magazines, and the broader influence of such ventures. For devoted reader, aspiring writer, and curious onlooker alike, these interviews open a largely hidden, endlessly interesting world.

Jayme Lynn Blaschke is a public-information specialist at Texas State University–San Marcos and the fiction editor of RevolutionSF.com. His interviews have appeared in Interzone and The Chronicle.

Overall, I believe it reads fairly well. Even better, it is an accurate description of the contents of the book, and doesn't misrepresent what the reader will find therein (although, I suppose, mis-interpretation is still possible. If someone expects this to be a step-by-step "how-to" book, they'll be disappointed). My one real suggestion--which Tish has already agreed to make--is substituting "Gardner Dozois" for the second "Edelman" reference. The reasons are obvious: 1) We want to get as many names on the cover as possible, to increase the potential appeal; 2) Edelman has already been reference strongly in the preceeding graf; 3) Dozois is about as well-known as an editor can get, via his many years helming Asimov's and publishing his Year's Best Science Fiction anthologies. It's simply a sound strategic move.

As I give it more thought, I'm also going to ask that "The Chronicle" be changed to "The Science Fiction Chronicle." I believe the name change of that magazine was ill-advised, and more people recognize the original name than the current one. Seriously, anyone reading the jacket copy in Houston, for instance, is much more likely to think I've written for the Houston Chronicle. Ditto for Austin, San Francisco, etc.

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One Who Walked Alone

Lisa and I watched The Whole Wide World last night (yes, I occasionally take breaks from writing to do other stuff). If you're not familiar with it, the film covers the final four years of pulp writer Robert E. Howard's life. Based on his sometime-girlfriend Novalyne Price's memoir One Who Walked Alone, the film takes its name from a Howard friend who introduces him as "The greatest pulp writer in the whole wide world."

I'm not the Howard buff like my friend Mark Finn, so I can't comment on the accuracy, but I really am moved to get the book the film was based on and read more about this man's tragic life. The movie simply feels authentic. There's not a plot to speak of, rather, the film unfolds into a series of events that dovetail into the next until the end is reached. Pretty much the way things work in real life. And I have to give a hearty recommendation to the attention paid to the period details in this film. For rural, 1930s Texas, they hit the nail on the head. This isn't a John Ford western with Monument Valley in the background. There are intermittent forests, miles of cornfields, old sharecropper shacks... They nail it. In fact, for a while I was convinced they'd filmed on location in Cross Plains, since I've been through there several times (never had a chance to stop at the Howard home, unfortunately) and the setting looked the part. So it came as only a mild surprise to read in the credits that it was filmed in Austin (the Paramount Theatre), Bastrop (my wife's hometown) and Bartlett. Actually, Bartlett was the least surprising of the locations. That tiny town has a vintage "main street" that has been used in quite a few period films, notably the Robert Duvall picture The Stars Fell on Henrietta. Lisa and I know these places fairly well, so we're going to watch the movie again and try and place all those locations that felt familiar when we saw them the first time.

But anyway, the movie is good. And tragic. Watch it when you get a chance.

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